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Jesus Knows What It's Like!

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Matthew 4:1.

Jesus faced every temptation you and I are likely to face, yet remained sinless. But his freedom to say 'yes' to God meant nothing if he wasn't free to say 'no.'

Temptations come to all of us, all our lives. The devil didn't finish with Jesus when he was tempted in the desert, but merely left him 'for a while.' We might talk about the 'hot temptations of youth' but similar temptations will come to us later as well: they pass into the subtle temptations of maturity, and the cynical temptations of old age.

The worst temptations are religious ones: thinking we're noble or godly for doing 'good.' That's why religious pride is so deadly. T S Eliot (Murder in the Cathedral) wrote: 'The last temptation is the greatest treason! To do the right thing for the wrong reason.'

As Jesus urged his disciples, may I `Rise and pray, that I may be spared the test.' Amen.

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Copyright & copy; 1997 Rowland Croucher. All rights reserved. May be freely used and reproduced by the Christian Church for the non-profit purposes of study and training only, provided all copyright information is included. May be resent only with copyright, authorship and contact information intact.

This article is published courtesy of Rowland Croucher, John Mark Ministries. If you would like to peruse more articles from the pen of Rowland Croucher, visit his website at http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm.

For more information on Bible studies available, visit the Churchlink site on the World Wide Web at http://www.churchlink.com.au/churchlink. Enquiries to: [email protected]